The Success Story of Barcodes

How something so simple changed the world forever.

Barcodes are everywhere. From the groceries you buy to the books you read, from the shipping labels on packages to the items at your local department store. But have you ever wondered how this simple yet powerful technology came into existence? Let’s take a step back and explore the fascinating history of the barcode.

The origins of the barcode can be traced to the 1940s. The idea for the barcode emerged from a simple yet revolutionary idea: to encode information visually, in a way that machines could read quickly and efficiently.

In 1948, a young engineer named Bernard Silver, working at Drexel Institute of Technology in Philadelphia, had the insight that a machine-readable code could be used to track products. Silver, alongside his colleague Norman Joseph Woodland, began working on the idea of a coded system for products. Their early designs were inspired by Morse code, which they envisioned as a set of vertical lines that would encode data about a product.

The initial version of the barcode was quite different from the modern ones we are familiar with today. Instead of the parallel lines we associate with barcodes, Woodland and Silver’s design used a series of concentric circles, a pattern that looked somewhat like a bullseye.